(no subject)
When they meet the soldiers, and those of the Telmarine army held captive, Cora feels a worry sweep her. There are so many, and she does not see Miles anywhere among them. She begins to ask men, here and there, if they have seen him.
“You must have,” she tells the man who led many men, including those of Chipstede. “He has brown hair-he’s only just turned sixteen,” and her voice breaks, slightly.
The man sighs, and looks at her. “Tall boy, was he?” he asks, softly, as Cora nods. “I thought that was the Miles you meant.” He watches her as the realization dawns and she begins to shake her head. “He has been dead this past week, miss. We do not have Narnian sorcery, to heal gut wounds.”
Cora murmurs a broken thank you, and flees back to the Narnian camp. She cannot find it in herself to be glad, even when she catches sight of the blond hair of Prince-King Caspian, unharmed and noble. Miles had been young, so young; that he died fighting for the wrong king seems an injustice to her beyond reparation.
That night, as she sits and mourns, a boy-young man-comes up to her. “Is aught amiss, my lady?” he asks, with a formality she is unused to.
She looks over, and stops a moment. He is dressed well, and with a sword at his side, and he is so very young. But she knows him. “A friend of mine is dead,” she tells him, more bluntly than she would if he wasn’t Edmund. And she takes a shaky breath, and tries to smile for his sake. “But thank you, your majesty.”
There is almost a noble grief to his bearing, at that, and he offers her a handkerchief; not the cleanest in the world, he tells her sheepishly, but she accepts it and uses it to wipe the tears off of her cheeks. They sit there together for maybe a quarter of an hour, and she takes comfort in the quiet companionship, before he is called by one of his sisters-Susan, Cora thinks. She forgets to give him back his handkerchief, and he doesn’t ask for it.
Later that night, when Doctor Cornelius finds out, he puts an arm around her shoulders and speaks kind words that make her weep. She is glad for the handkerchief, then.